The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-10-29
CHAMPLAIN.

OPOh uhO AAD6O tCAA PCSsOOao W6OOl6 VI
western Europe he learned the art of
sailing ships, and acquired the mastery
of storms. No rougher or better school
was ever navigator graduated from.
A Catholic by birth, he fought in the
bloody civil wars of France beneath the
banners of Navarro. He triumphed with
his cause, and, perfect sailor and perfect
soldier, he stood perfectly equipped for
his great future.
A born explorer, he joined the forces
of Spain, that he might personally have
knowledge OF her colonial possessions
and their resources.
The Spaniards gave him command Of
ship in their West India feet. He wis.,
tied Vera Cruz, penetrated to the City of
Mexico, landed at Panama, and then and
there, two hundred and seventy years
ago. conceived the idea of ship canal
across the isthmus, which, he says in his
journal, "would shorten the voyage to
the South Sea by more than fifteen hun
dred leagues"
And Lesseps is only doing now what
Champlain said then might be done.
From Spanish service and these wide
wanderings he returned to France, and
with De Charities, comrsde of his when
battling under Navarro against the
League, he sailed for the St. Lawrence.
He was genuine yachtsman. He had
two boats called shallops. One was Of
twelve tons measurement; the other of
fifteen.
He crossed the wild Atlantic in his lit
tie yachts in safety, entered the St. Law
renee, and cruised up his broad stream
as far as Hochelaga, now Montreal
Jacques Cartier, sixty-eight years be-
fore, had found an Indian city there, Of
Mohawks probably. But Champlain
found no city. It had been RACED, and
the Hurons who had driven the Iroquois
southwark were there.
A pregnant fact, for had the Mohawks
still been there, Champlain had made al
lance with them, and the Six Nations
had then been the allies of France and
not of England in the hundred years of
war that followed, and probably the flag
of France would have waved in after
years at Albany and over Manhattan is
land as it waved above Detroit and New
Orleans. So
A few years later he came again from
France, founded Quebec, and, in order to
explore the country southwark, joined a
war party of Hurons at Sorel, who were
found Southwark in foray against the
Mohawks.
On the 4th Of July, 1909, Champlain
first saw and hoated upon the waters of
the lake to which the universal insistence
Of the world against repeated attempts to
change it, has given his name.
The imagination kindles when touched
by this event. What picture an artist
of power might make OF the historic
scene. The entrance of its white disccv
erer, this sailor from the Bay of Biscay,
this warrior of Old France, upon the wa
tiers of this lake, destined to be his sole
but everlasting monument on the conti-
nent that he beyond any other man ex-
plored and helped to civilize.
You can see the spectacle as if your
eyes beheld it.
The hot July sun breaking through the
rolling mists; the white man standing in
the foremost OF sixty canoes studying
with surprised and delighted eyes the
scene; the long train of savage warriors
in paint and plume trailing in his wake,
the low, fiat islands, arboreous to their
edges floating upon the tranquil water;
to the south and east the Green mount
aims, verdant to their SUBMITS; to the
west the Adirondacks, with their hundred
peaks unfolding the sky, with Whiteface
nearest, and therefore seemingly loftiest
of all, piercing the blue ether with it's
white cone; the odor OF forest woods per-
Tuning the moist air and hocks OF wild
fowl brushing the water as they flew; no
wonder he wrote home glowing descrip-
ton of the scene as "more beautiful than
his eyes in all his wanderings had ever
beheld."
Had he stopped there and gone no far
Their southwark and so brought not on
France the hatred OF relentless race by
shedding Iroquois blood, how different
would have been the history of the next
one hundred and fifty years, and how
different, too, might have been every
page of American history since.
For more than once in after years of
strife 'twixt France and England, the
Mohawk hatred of the French stood like
wall of rock between the English colo
nists on the Atlantic coast and the sweep
of northern invasion, and saved them.
But the hotilla moved on, carrying des-
tiny with it. They passed Cumberland
Head, Grande Isle, Valoour, and the IA
tai Mohawk Rock in Burlington bay,
which from immemorial times had marked
the sacred boundary of that mighty con-
federation of native warriors who ruled
the continent from the Connecticut
to Lake Erie; from Chsmplain to Florida
and near Ticonderoga, padding silently
on one night, suddenly ran against war
party Of Iroquois bound northward in
search of Huron trespassers.
At morning the battle was joined and